


How things came to be

by Alessgrosskid (thatonegrosskid)



Series: Extended Family [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Murder Family, Not Beta Read, One Shot, a bunch of other people move in so its kind of a commune, au introduction, casual murder talk, does this count as a fix it?, one big happy family-ish, the murder family moves out to the country side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23489188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatonegrosskid/pseuds/Alessgrosskid
Summary: Will liked to climb up to the top of the main house and look over the land, watch Hannibal in the garden with Abigail, Randall and Francis helping out around the property or wrestling each other in the grass. He could usually find Matthew following someone around or working with the animals with Margot and if he looked really hard, He could just see Chiyoh’s perch at the end of the one long road leading to the entrance, though he rarely saw Chiyoh. He could even see his dogs, running around in the grass or resting under the shade of the houses. He knew it sounded weird and he definitely doubted himself sometimes, but taking up Hannibal's offer and coming here was the best thing he’d ever done.Or: Will's mental rambling about how exactly this happened.
Relationships: Francis Dolarhyde/Randall Tier, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: Extended Family [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1689937
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	How things came to be

**Author's Note:**

> hehe, this is a bit of a rambley mess, more or less just to explain how things got the way they did. In other parts of the series, I wanna show more abt how everyone interacts and how outsiders see them, specifically Jack, Alana and Freddie.

The Lecter compound is a huge, sprawling plot of land with a border of dense forests that the edge of the property was almost completely lost in, save a river in the far end, marking the back. When he was able, Will liked to climb up to the top of the main house, almost smack in the middle of the property, and look over the land, watch Hannibal in the garden with Abigail, Randall and Francis helping out around the property or wrestling each other in the grass. He could usually find Matthew following someone around or working with the animals with Margot and if he looked really hard, He could just see Chiyoh’s perch at the end of the one long road leading to the entrance, though he rarely saw Chiyoh. He could even see his dogs, running around in the grass or resting under the shade of the houses. He knew it sounded weird and he definitely doubted himself sometimes, but taking up Hannibal's offer and coming here was the best thing he’d ever done. The only problem in any of this was, as always, the public. 

Hannibal had shown him the headline from his tablet only a few weeks after they had moved in, ‘ _ Could Maryland Have A New Cult On Its Hands? _ ’ Or something to that effect, showing aerial shots of their property and a blurry photo of Hannibal ushering Will and Abigail into his car on their way there. He had to lay in their bed for a long moment, trying not to laugh so he didn't wake Abigail in the next room. There were some people in the comments pointing out the obvious, two men and their adoptive daughter moving to the countryside did not a cult make, even if one had been mistakenly imprisoned for murder, and that at least helped restore a little bit of faith in humanity. It didn’t exactly get better when more people started moving in. 

First, Hannibal left for a two week long ‘trip’ to get something important from his family home. That something being Chiyoh. She was quiet for a long time, she still was, but she smiled more now, joked at the dinner table, helped prepare meals. She took up a post, guarding the main entrance to the compound, happy to sit alone away from the milling of the main house, the occasional chicken as company. “I couldn’t imagine this being a home without her,” Hannibal told him once, walking back to the house from a visit to her post. Will didn't ask what she had been doing in his home before, figured whatever had Hannibal so pleased when he came back couldn't be good, but after a few weeks the static between the two of them lifted and Will found he didn't care. 

Margot and Matthew came together, meeting on a shared search for Hannibal and Will respectively. They drove in together, apologized for coming unannounced, and eventually they just didn’t leave. They were fine additions to the family, after Matthew’s first and last attempt on Hannibal's life, of course, finding some freedom in the compound they didn’t get outside. Once at breakfast, Margot smiled, said she hasn’t seen a single one of her brother’s goons since she’d gotten there, not even in town. “Chiyoh would never let someone like that in through the gate,” Hannibal had assured her, “And people who try to sneak in through the woods tend to go missing.” 

Randall came when Hannibal called offering work and dragged Francis with him, said they'd met online and they'd both be grateful for the work and the chance to get away from the city. They would come a few days a week to help out on the property, mostly to help with the animals or heavy lifting, staying in one of the many empty ‘guest rooms’ in the second house. They were odd, even by their groups standards, but they fit well in a house full of closets full of skeletons and unprocessed trauma. Francis was a large man, quiet and prickly to everyone (including Randall), so it was a surprise when he was the one who asked if they could stay longer than a few days. His house had burnt down and he figured they both could use the change. He spoke bluntly and quietly, only nodding when Hannibal smiled and said they could move in whenever they liked. When will asked him about it that night, Hannibal smiled his annoyingly pleased with himself smile and told him, "You have your beasts, Will, Chiyoh hers, Matthew his. I think it's only fair that I have mine." Will would never tell Francis or Randall about that comment, but he feels like they would be pleased with it anyways.

They had settled together into something that could be considered a family, with no plans to add anyone new into their fold, save Margot’s wishes for a child. Hannibal had offered his assistance once, sitting together in the living room, ensuring only what she was comfortable with and a sort of medical detachment. He knows she thought about it, thought long and hard, but had declined eventually. He wouldn't pry, not verbally anyways, but he knew why. She couldn't, not with him, even ignoring the elephant in the room that was her sexuality. There were too many lines tangled between them that didn't need to get any worse, emotions and business neither of them talked about outside makeshift therapy sessions in the guest rooms.

They had no  _ plans  _ for anyone new to come into their home, but no one said anything when Hannibal and Will brought Peter home, soaked in blood and carrying a fat rat in his hands as he talked to them. Will took him up to shower while Hannibal brought everyone together in the living room and explained that he would be staying with them. They didn't question the bits of the story Hannibal left out, why Peter was covered in blood, how he and Will had found him, what exactly happened to his social worker, they could draw their own conclusions. 

When Will and Peter came back down, introductions were given and Hannibal and Abigail went to start dinner, the night going on as if nothing had happened. 

Peter moved into an empty room in the main house, to keep him close to Will and away from Francis and Randall who, while nice, were obscenely loud in their shared room, to the point where it was a gamble checking in on them if you would walk in on them fighting or fucking (even after Hannibal's insistence that if they were going to mate like animals, they would do it out on the property where the rest of them didn't have to hear them). Over the next few days, they brought in new animals to the property, two horses, Kevin the rat, three birds, a rabbit and those are just the one’s Hannibal allowed him to bring, putting his foot down at the concept of having anymore animals running around the house (though if a few more showed up afterwards, he didn't say anything to Peter about it.)

By then, the few tabloids that still gave a shit about them were having a field day every time someone noticed they had a new guest or if a particularly nosy reporter happened to go missing, the people of the small town nearby were gossips apparently. Every so often, a reporter or journalist would show up at the gates, only to be politely sent off by Chiyoh or more impolitely if they tried to get in anyway. Hannibal liked to keep track of what the public was saying about them, opening his tablet over the breakfast table. Will thought he would print the headlines out and frame them if it didn’t sound so tacky.

“Why are they so interested in us?” Abigail asked, having been out at Chiyoh’s perch when a certain persistent journalist had driven up, asking to come in and, when Chiyoh told her to leave, tried to interrogate Abigail before Chiyoh could draw her gun. 

"Nothing better to do, I guess," Margot shrugged, picking at her food, eager to go out with the horses, probably. 

"They're starving for content, focusing on the weird maybe-cult is about as good as it gets," Will sipped his coffee, pretending that nobody could tell he was feeding Winston scraps under the table, "God forbid they find anything else worthwhile to gossip about."

“Everyone wants to scream cult or gang when people get together to try and live their lives,” Randall had finished his food before the rest, sitting at the table to be respectful (as if they couldn’t tell he had his phone under the table), “If we were a murder cult, this whole state would go down in flames.”

"At lease they're calling us a murder cult and not a sex cult," Matthew pretended to shudder, "I can deal with a lot of things, but the moment some creep starts asking about my sex life, I quit."

"Do you remember when we first started thinking about bringing Abigail into our family, Will?” Hannibal rolled his eyes behind the screen, “I wish I could have gone out and  _ done something  _ about some of the awful things that were written about us, but I was otherwise occupied.”

“If I remember right, you  _ did  _ do something about one,” Will looked at him, raising an eyebrow when Hannibal denied any involvement.

“That one was me, actually,” Abigail shrugged, “I was dealing with a lot, to be fair, and that guy wasn’t helping.”

Hannibal looked at her proudly and their conversation continued on as if Abigail hadn't casually admitted to murdering someone for implying that anything untoward was happening between her and her dads.

And it's not as if anyone in the house was unfamiliar with murder, the overall openness about past (and future) crimes over the table or in the garden was becoming increasingly normal. It's not like they got any visitors to overhear them, most of them were antisocial at best and Hannibal had already agreed not to bring any unexpected dinner guests home outside of tupperware. Those with messy business did it outside of the compound at the very least as a courtesy for the rest of them (especially Peter, who could accept them, extracurricular activities and all, but did not enjoy hearing or seeing people get hurt.)

To Will's surprise, Matthew was the one who took their house rules most seriously, taking up the role of a long suffering nanny when he was in the house. He was the first to call out anyone who dragged mud into the house or put away the chicken feed wrong and took it upon himself to scold Margot when she forgot a piece of her riding gear or force Randall and Francis out of the house when they started roughhousing. It was almost funny and was Hannibal had no qualms with it, glad there was someone else in the house willing to take control or a situation and enforce the rules that had been put in place (unless of course, Matthew reminded him that screens at the table was a bad look, in which case it was  _ his  _ house and he could sit at  _ his  _ table however he pleased.)

Will was honestly surprised that nobody has murdered each other yet, even knowing he had to physically hold Abigail off from taking a hunting knife into Francis and Randall's room back when they stayed in the main house, their collective mess of neurosis somehow evening each other out. Even those of them who’d previously made attempts at each other’s lives were at the very least civil with each other, if not friendly or familial. Sometimes, while he’s sitting up on the roof, watching everyone from above, he feels normal in a way he very rarely had before. He wouldn’t tell any of them that, especially not Hannibal (thought he had a suspicion that he already knew), but it was a nice feeling. 

“Dad.” 

He looked down to see Abigail watching him from the ground. He could see her wiping her hands off on the legs of her jeans, which they both knew Hannibal would call out, one of the dogs following at her heels out of the garden. “Hannibal’s calling us into the living room.”

He nods and climbs down, Abigail meeting him at the door so they walk in together. 


End file.
